


theory of quantum superposition

by alephnaught



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe But a Little to the Left, Fluff and Angst, Gen, No Incest Of Any Kind, Number Five | The Boy Gets A Hug But It Takes A While, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Some Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29668188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephnaught/pseuds/alephnaught
Summary: When attempting to fix their own timeline, the Hargreeves inadvertently strand themselves in a universe very different from their own—one where their father, and by extension the Umbrella (and Sparrow) Academy, doesn’t exist. As the siblings try to make their way back to their own universe, they encounter faces both familiar and unfamiliar, fight, bond, and fight some more, and ultimately face a question: Who would the Hargreeves siblings have been if Reginald had never forced them to be heroes?
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone
Comments: 16
Kudos: 40





	theory of quantum superposition

**Author's Note:**

> So this is, in essence, my "five gets a hug" fic, only I went super overboard. It's technically an ensemble fic where I aim to let all of the Hargreeves work through their stuff together, realize some things, and grow as characters, though my writing angle is from a more Five-oriented perspective and also I hope to explore Five and Allison's dynamic. First chapter is a lot of set up but after this the plot picks up. Any OCs are characters I've found necessary for plot purposes and will not be given any focus other than that.

The third time Allison Hargreeves travels through time is somehow worse than the first two.

It would never be a comfortable experience, of course. One moment your body is one whole, solid piece, and the next, your are atoms are ripped apart and hurled agonizingly through the spacetime equivalent of a blender on a superhighway. And the arrival is almost worse—an instant of blank confusion followed by churning nausea, a feeling of being crushed from the inside out. Then, of course, vertigo-inducing shifts of gravity accompanied by an abrupt crash landing back into physical existence.

Time travel is not something she will ever get used to.

But that thought occupies her mind for only a moment before it is immediately replaced by another:

_Claire._

She makes a softer landing than before, on a yielding bed of grass rather than solid asphalt or tiled flooring, and for a moment she merely lies there with her eyes closed, allowing herself to breathe. The fresh air hits her senses first, just a moment before her ears register the sound of another dull _thump!_ and a dramatic groan that is so unmistakably Klaus.

Relief floods her veins.

She opens her eyes and sits up, wincing at the way the light stokes a headache in her temples, and takes in her surroundings. Weak sunlight filters through the thin canopy of leaves above her, the sun blanketed by a thick sprawl of clouds. Somewhere behind her she can hear Klaus groaning in complaint; ahead of her she can see Luther, already standing and gazing around, though he leans a bit against the trunk of a tree as if the vertigo hasn’t quite passed him yet. The air is only vaguely chill despite the overcast, borderline foggy day, and a gently breeze buffets her hair.

The relative peace is shattered by the sound of someone violently losing the contents of their stomach. Allison’s gaze swings left and catches on Diego, holding himself against another tree as he’s bent nearly double. Lying next to him in the grass is the briefcase, which Five had insisted on taking but not using for this trip, though, as per usual, he hadn’t explained why.

“No more time travel,” Klaus whines, fittingly. “I’d be very, very happy if I never have to time travel again.”

Diego retches in agreement in Allison grins, buoyed with hope, and then laughs, and she doesn’t stop even though it worsens her headache significantly. It’s probably an odd thing to do in the moment, but then Luther smiles and Vanya, holding her head woozily off to Allison’s right, lets out a breathless chuckle.

“Did we do it, then?” she asks hopefully. “Are we back to 2019—to _our_ 2019?”

There’s a long pause as they all look around, then at each other. It’s been a whirlwind of a day—several days, more accurately—starting with Five’s reappearance in 1963 and only escalating to the shock of their lives that was April 2, 2019 and the Sparrow Academy. And _Ben._ She’d had barely a moment to gain her bearings before they were fighting for their lives.

_“Scatter!” Luther had roared. Within minutes of the first blow, it had become clear it was a fight they couldn’t win. For one thing, they were slightly outnumbered: seven Sparrows, not counting Reginald, versus the six Umbrella Academy students, all of whom were already exhausted from the fight at Sissy’s farm. Allison found herself fighting a slight girl with dark hair in a whirlwind of hand-to-hand combat._

_A lot of Allison’s training was enshrined in muscle memory, and she found she could easily hold her own against most other combatants. But against this Sparrow girl she quickly felt herself losing ground. Soon it was all she could to do block each of her lightning-quick blows._

_From what she could ascertain about the rest of her family, they weren’t faring much better. Someone somewhere cried out in pain, but it was barely discernible over the sounds of the battle, the shouting and grunting and sounds of landing blows._

_The woman Allison was fighting grinned sharply before jabbing a sharp uppercut to Allison’s jaw, a blow that turned out to be a feint when Allison moved to block and the woman swung with her other fist, too quickly to block, catching her on the cheek. And the woman hit_ hard. _Allison swore as she stumbled, which the Sparrow woman took as an opportunity to land another blow at the side of her head._

_Allison saw stars._

_“I’d expected you to put up more of a fight,” she said, squaring up to launch her next attack, but the rest of what she tried to say was drowned out by an explosion to her left that shook the floor, leaving Allison even more unsteady. There was a shrieking and howling that engulfed the room. Exhausted and reeling, Allison was off her guard when the woman launched her next attack, and blow landed squarely to her solar plexus. The air escaped her lungs in one gasp._

_She was able to block the next kick with her forearm, luckily, giving her a moment to recenter herself. When the woman attacked next, she was ready, blocking the high kick with ease and countering with a sweep to her leg, sending her plummeting to the ground. The woman caught herself easily, but as the tried to right herself Allison took the offensive, launching enough of a counterattack to feel she was gaining the upper hand._

_Luther was shouting. “Scatter!” he managed to yell before his voice cut off abruptly. Allison was so focused on her own battle she hadn’t even noticed the rising temperature in the room until she and her opponent rotated so she could see licks of flame growing on the far wall. There was Ben, in the Horror’s full glory, but it was thrashing in weak, aborted motions. Was it the source of the ungodly scream?_

_It distracted her for a minute second, but in the fights such as these, a sliver of distraction is enough. The Sparrow woman threw a high kick that struck the side of Allison’s head like a hammer, darkening her vision for a second, and she realized any advantage she’d been gaining, she’d lost. The kick is swiftly followed by another—and the next thing she knew she was on the floor, breathing heavily, as the woman loomed over her._

_“This turned out to be disappointingly anticlimactic,” said the woman. “No wonder Dad decided to get rid of you all.”_

_And then there was a hand around Allison’s throat, choking her._

_Her legs thrashed, desperately trying to throw her off, as her lungs struggle for the air they were being deprived of. The fight at Sissy’s farm, with that strange woman who stole her air from her in a similar fashion, flashed uselessly through her mind. She wouldn’t die like this. Not like this. But the woman’s grip was a vice, and though her fingernails scrabbled fruitlessly into the back of her hand, she did not let go._

_Her vision began to go fuzzy at the edges._

_Then there was a cry of pain— in an instant, the pressure was gone from her throat and she was turning to the side, coughing up her lungs. Then she saw the Sparrow woman, on the ground just was Allison had been a moment ago, holding her nose as blood poured down her face. Five stood over her, disheveled from the fight, streaks of blood dried to the side of his face, but his eyes were clear, the intensity in them electric, as he landed a kick the side of the woman’s head with a resounding crack. Her body stilled for a moment, but even as Allison watched she began to gather herself and come to her feet, snarling._

_Then Five grabbed her arm and the manor dissolved around her, and then she was on the sidewalk outside on her knees, vaguely nauseated. Cars flew by on the street as if it was a regular day—as if Allison’s life hadn’t been turned completely upside down._ Again.

_It took her a moment to even notice Klaus, crouching against the outer gate and watching her with hollow eyes._

_“We should regroup,” he said flatly._

_She was about to protest—the others are still inside fighting, Five included, who had jumped back into the Academy without her even noticing—when she remembered Luther’s shouted command. Five would have no trouble blipping the others to safety. She would only be another hinderance if she went back in._

_“Okay,” she said, determinedly rising onto unsteady legs. Distantly, there was the sound of shattering glass and an angry roar as she approached her brother and lifted him to his feet. “You’re right. Let’s go.”_

“Hey, watch it!” comes a sudden shout, chasing Allison’s thoughts away, and a slew of cyclists are suddenly trundling straight for her. She barely has the presence of mind to dive out of the way as they yell and curse, trying to avoid her without swerving into each other.

“The fuck they doing sitting in the middle of a bike path—?” she hears one of them gripe as they ride out of sight around a curve in the path.

“Assholes,” Allison mutters, briskly brushing dirt from her knees to distract herself from her own racing heartbeat.

“You okay, Allison?” Vanya says quietly.

“I’m fine.” She clears her throat. “Anyone recognize where we are? Because I don’t.”

“I am _very_ familiar with any and all parks in a twenty mile radius of the Academy,” Klaus says from where he’s sprawled dramatically in a bush. “ _Very_ familiar. This bush is quite lovely, very comfortable, really, and I would recognize her if I had been here before. Comfortable bushes are so hard to come by these days—”

_“Klaus.”_

“—Which is to say that I have no idea where we are. Anyone else?”

A quick glance around confirms no one else recognizes the area. Then Vanya hesitantly begins, “Um—”

Allison’s gaze swings to her. “You recognize something?”

“Well, no—”

“Damn,” Allison says. “We’ll just have to find our way out. If we get to a road I bet we could figure out where we are. We can’t have landed that far from where we left.”

“Unless Five sent us back to Dallas,” Diego argues. “Maybe because that’s where we missed everything up we had to go back to fix it.”

“Guys?”

“That’s stupid,” Allison disagrees. “Besides, those bikers we just saw were wearing modern clothing.”

“So we’re still in 2019?” Luther asks, confused. “But, like, the first 2019?”

“But Five said he was going to take us somewhere _to_ fix… it,” Diego says. “Not that this _was_ going to fix… you know… it.”

“Well?” Allison says expectantly. “Where are we? Or I mean, when are we?”

No one answers her. She looks around; at Luther, who mirrors her; Diego, blinking with incomprehension; Klaus, whose body language as become slightly more tense; and Vanya, meeting Allison’s gaze with her own wide, frustrated eyes.

“Five?” slips out of Allison’s mouth almost unthinkingly.

“He’s not here,” Vanya says sharply. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. _He’s not here.”_

Diego sits up, swiveling around searchingly as each of the siblings (sans Vanya) do the same, this time looking for a small, dark haired figure rather than a familiar landmark. Yet just as Vanya said, there is none to be found.

“Five?” Luther shouts experimentally, cutting the fallen silence like a beacon.

Nothing but a distant birdsong answers the call.

* * *

A little while later and Diego is seriously regretting their decision to split up.

“A tree?”

“No.”

“The grass?”

“No.”

“That shrub?

“No.”

“A bush?”

“Be more specific.”

Diego rolls his eyes and points.

“No.”

“I’m supposed to guess every single bush we pass?!”

“Only bushes that are a medium-dark mossy green with a cool undertone. Did you even listen to me? ‘I spy something that’s medium-dark mossy green with a cool undertone.’”

Diego points again.

“That’s clearly olive.”

“I will kill you.”

Klaus sulks. “Not my fault you can’t differentiate color shades.”

“Fine, I give up!”

He’s supposed to be looking for landmarks, anyway, not be playing I Spy. The plan was for Allison, Luther, and Vanya to follow the path in one direction while he and Klaus followed in the other, that hopefully one of the two groups would find some kind of visitor’s center or a road in order to gain their bearings. Vanya was weirdly reluctant to leave their landing spot, insisting doing so would make it harder for Five to find them if he showed up while they were gone, but when a thorough search of the surrounding area turned up nothing she sullenly gave in.

It was a good plan, anyway. Or would have been, if he and Klaus hadn’t somehow wandered off the path.

“You’re no fun. It was that very specific bush we passed a while back with those spindly ferns that I think gave me this rash on my hand.”

Diego stops walking and groans, turning to Klaus in exasperation. “What fucking rash? We’ve been here ten minutes and you already got a rash?”

“Pretty sure we’ve been here way longer than that,” Klaus objects, pretending to be wounded. “Two hours, at least. Do you want to see?”

“No,” Diego growls, spinning back around to resume their trek. “Anyway, you should know better. Don’t you remember wilderness training? Dad made sure we could recognize poisonous plants on the spot. Don’t tell me you already forgot what poison ivy looks like.”

“It wasn’t poison ivy,” Klaus says patiently. “It didn’t have three leaves. Actually, it looked a lot like that one up ahead.”

“What?”

Klaus points, then bounds ahead to get a closer look. “Actually… this looks a lot like the one I was thinking of. See, the way it’s wrapped around this truck kind of looks like Desi Arnaz.”

“Who?”

“Lucille Ball’s husband, you cretin.”

“It does not.” But he looks, and sure enough it does bear a striking resemblance.

“What are the odds?” Klaus is saying. “Astronomical, I would say. Two poisonous Desi Arnaz vines in the same—”

Diego groans loudly, rubbing his palms to his eyes in exasperation. “It’s the same plant, Klaus. Shit! We’ve been walking in circles!”

( _“Stick to the path,”_ Luther had told them sternly before they parted. “The last thing we need is to get separated.”)

Diego could’ve sworn he’s been walking straight.

Just as he stops to mull over their predicament, voices begin to filter in through the foliage behind them. He jumps in front of Klaus, despite his protestations, and rests each of his hands on a knife a brief moment before a group of cheerful hikers comes into their view.

“Ho, there!” comes a cheerful Aussie accent and Diego has a moment of panic, thinking they landed in Australia, before he notices the map in the woman’s hands and camera around her neck that tag her as a tourist. He subtly takes his hands off his knives. It’s a group of people headed by the Aussie woman, including a couple of children and bright-eyed, energetic adults. “You guys headed to the overlook too?”

“We totally are,” Klaus answers before Diego can even say anything. “We are totally excited to see the overlook, but unfortunately, my dear brother here got us lost!” He makes an exaggerated face of despair.

“Well, you two can follow along with us, if you’d like,” she offers without even pausing her hike. She calls back to them over her shoulder, “We’re not too far off!”

“Beats walking in circles,” Klaus whispers impishly to Diego, who scowls and treks after the rest of the group. Ahead of them, the Aussie woman powerwalks forward as she makes polite small talk with some of the other tourists—they likewise must have just met each other—as Diego and Klaus struggle to keep pace.

Klaus nudges Diego. “We should _ask them,”_ he stage whispers.

Diego shakes his head firmly. The last thing they need is to make people think they’re… crazy or something. Then he looks hard at Klaus’ face and groans.

“Don’t tell me you touched your face with your rash hand.”

“Did not,” he says, vigorously scratching.

“For the love of—stop scratching!”

“This is gonna kill me,” he moans. “I can feel it. I survived time traveling assassins, the first apocalypse, Vietnam, the goddamn ‘60s, and even more time traveling assassins, and this is what finally does me in. A poisonous Desi Arnaz vine.”

“Shut up, Klaus.”

“That Aussie woman seems cool,” he continues. “I bet if we just explained the whole time travel thing, she wouldn’t think we were weird.”

“What are you guys talking about?”

“Agh!”

They swing around in unison, startled to find someone had been walking behind them. It’s a young girl with short-cropped blond hair wearing khaki shorts and a t-shirt that says “Future Astronaut.” Her bright eyes stare up at them in curiosity. Diego, who is terrible at guessing kids’ ages, estimates she might be six or seven.

He blinks. “Um, we were just talking about, er… adult stuff.” As soon as the words are out of his mouth he cringes internally.

“I thought I heard you say ‘time travel,’” she says, and Diego notes the Australian accent, figuring she must be Dark Haired Aussie Woman’s daughter.

“You know what time travel is?” Diego asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

“Yeah,” she says, politely rolling her eyes to indicate she thinks he’s an idiot. She points to her t-shirt proudly. “I’m an astronaut and we know all about that kind of stuff.”

“That says you’re a future astronaut,” says Klaus. “Not a now astronaut.”

“In the future I’m a now astronaut. What’s your name?”

“I’m Klaus and this is my brother, Diego,” Klaus sings, grabbing Diego’s arm and waving it affectionately. “What’s your name?”

“Grace,” she answers, not noticing Diego jerking his head around to look at her with wide eyes. “So are you guys time travelers?”

Klaus and Diego share a glance over her head. Diego shakes his head firmly, mouthing _don’t you dare._

“Yup,” says Klaus, enthusiastically popping the ‘p’ sound. “You got us. We’re time travelers.”

“So cool,” Grace says, eyes round.

“Actually—” Klaus lowers his voice and leans in conspiratorially— “we just got here and we’re not sure when we are. Do you know what the date is?”

“Yeah,” she says, “it’s Tuesday.”

“What month?”

“August.”

“August?” Diego repeats. “Shit.”

“That’s a bad word,” she says disapprovingly.

“Kid,” says Diego urgently, glancing ahead at the rest of the group to make sure none of them are listening (they aren’t) before continuing, “do you know the exact date? Like, the number day of the month, month, and year?”

“Yeah,” she says, beaming, and pulls something small and rectangular from her pocket. When she pushes a small button protruding from one side, the front face of the rectangle, which had previously been black, suddenly lights up. “It’s my mom’s,” she explains, noticing their evident confusion. “I was texting Daddy. He didn’t come today because he had a really bad headache so I was—”

“Kid, the date?” Diego interrupts, ignoring the fact he has no idea what “texting” is and trying to hide his impatience. From the way Klaus glares at him he’s not very successful, but Grace doesn’t seem to care.

“Oh, yeah. It’s Tuesday, August twenty-first.”

“What year?”

Klaus shoots him another glare.

Unperturbed, she answers, “2018.”

“2018,” Diego repeats. He exhales, slow and relieved, before nodding. “2018,” he says again, and triumphantly slaps Klaus on the back. “We’re just a few months off. He did it, the old bastard did it!”

But Klaus isn’t even paying him attention. “Hey,” he says, poking Grace lightly in the shoulder, “what’s that little gizmo you got th—”

“Gracie!” calls Dark Haired Aussie Woman from up ahead. “You’ve got to see this!”

With a bright grin, the girl bounces away in a flash of yellow hair to rejoin her mother before either of them can say another word. For just a moment, when she said her name was Grace—but no, Diego thinks, it was just an odd coincidence. This girl’s hair was more yellow where their mother’s had been white, and anyway, it’s 2018 and their mother will be at the Academy, safe and sound.

Still, there’s a small lance of pain when he thinks of the flesh-and-blood woman he met in Dallas. But he pushes that away, pausing his hike and grabbing Klaus’ arm to stop him from following the rest of the group.

“We should go back,” he says. “Regroup.”

“We still don’t know where we are,” Klaus disagrees. “Only when. And something feels weird—did you see that thingy she had?”

“It’s nothing,” Diego dismisses. “Just a new rich-kid toy.”

For a long moment, Klaus gives him a sideways look. The tourist group ploughs ahead, unceasing, as the two linger behind them.

“I saw the look you gave her,” Klaus says at last. “She looks kind of like the baby-version of robot Mom, huh?”

“Don’t call her that!” His fingers curl into a fist for a moment before slackening. He ducks his head slightly and wonders whether he should even say anything, because it’s not like it matters at this point, before finally admitting, “I saw her. In Dallas.”

“In the 1960s? Pretty sure she didn’t exist back then—”

“No. The real Grace. She was an actual person.”

“Really?” Klaus’ eyebrows shoot up. He appears to mull over this new information. “And, what, was she actually married to Dad?”

“I don’t think so. I think she was just, like, dating him or whatever.”

“What, willingly? Gross. You know what, it is _just_ like Dad to make a robot version of his long-lost girlfriend, creepy fuck.”

In spite of everything, this elicits a small laugh. It _is_ just like him. He wonders what happened to the first Grace—she was younger than their father, yet he had easily survived the half-century into 2019. Had she died tragically? Or had she left him?

Then he’s suddenly made aware of a distant noise. “Wait… do you hear that?”

The group they had been following is already far ahead, but in the distance he hears something of a roaring sound, a noise he had previously been aware of only subconsciously until it had grown loud enough that he could no longer ignore it.

Klaus listens. “Maybe we’re near a road?”

“Maybe.”

Although the sky is overcast—though certainly not dark—the day is still quite warm. Admittedly, Diego hasn’t been paying much attention to their surroundings, lost in thought. Now, though, he wishes he had been a bit more focused. He starts walking again, following the path of the tourist group to whatever the destination was, and Klaus falls into step behind him.

For an instant, Diego’s gaze registers a flash of color in the distant sky—bright orange—but when he looks closer all he sees is a light shadow in the clouds.

As they walk, the distant roar gets steadily louder until finally there’s a break in the tree line and a small parking lot opens up before them, and beyond that, a bridge spanning the width of a six-lane highway below. And beyond that, less clearly discernible through the haze, is an expanse of murky blue water that had remained obscured by the trees running along to their left.

“We’re on some kind of peninsula?” Diego mutters, looking around in confusion.

The light fog is slowly dissipating, drawing attention to the darkening shadow looming over the water as they trek further along the path, between the water and the concrete parking lot and over a landscape of small hills and rugged, dry looking vegetation, closer to the distant edge of the peninsula. They must have landed further than any of them expected. Near one of the Great Lakes? Even all the way to the Atlantic? Their last non-briefcase jump had taken them from the Great Lakes region all the way to Texas; they couldn’t discount any possibility.

The sky continues to lighten as sunlight begins to shine through the clouds. A gust of wind picks up, parting the distant fog until a tall form starts to come into focus. Diego can now see the path of the highway running below them plunges straight into the water via a… a bridge…

The wind gusts the last of the hanging fog, revealing sweeping cable lines and bright towers as Diego begins swear, more out of exasperation than any real aggravation.

“Oh, duh!” says Klaus, slapping his forehead comically. “You know, I thought one of those trees back there looked familiar, actually.”

* * *

Nine separate bikers with odd wires hooked into their ears pass Allison, Luther, and Vanya on the path before they reunite with Klaus and Diego. Allison’s eyes glow with determination, her jaw set and head held high, alit with purpose. As soon as the two groups see each other, Diego begins, “It’s fucking San—”

“San Francisco, August 21, 2018,” Allison blurts. She is nearly vibrating with excitement. “This is perfect!”

“I don’t see how,” Diego mutters.

She ignores him. “In 2018, Patrick kept a vacation home in San Jose. We can catch a bus or something to San Jose to stay! We could easily get there by nightfall!”

“Uh-uh,” says Luther immediately. “We can’t risk running into your 2018 self. When Five ran into his older—er, younger self in Dallas, they both went nuts.”

Everyone stares at him.

“The fuck you talking about, man?” says Diego.

Luther sets his jaw. “It’s called paranoid psychosis. Er—paradox psychosis.”

“Whatever,” Allison dismisses. “We won’t run into… _me…_ because in August 2018 I was filming a movie in Europe.” When everyone looks unconvinced, she insists, “Guys, this is perfect! We’ll get food, a comfortable place to stay, and access to my funds to do whatever we plan to do from there. And it’s only about an hour’s car ride. Who’s in?”

It takes no more convincing to get all five of them piled into a (luckily larger than usual) taxicab en route to San Jose. But the discomfort of the cab ride is forced to the back of Allison’s mind in favor of anticipation of their arrival. Anticipation of seeing her daughter again for the first time in years. She can’t stop herself from beaming, even when her face starts to hurt and she knows she looks slightly deranged, but she can’t help it.

Claire will be so thrilled to meet her aunt and uncles. Patrick will be confused, maybe even upset to see her, but once she explains the situation she’s sure he’ll understand. If she’s remembering correctly, the custody battle is set to commence in a month and their relationship is more contentious now than it had ever been—but he’ll understand. All they need is a place to stay.

It will be fine.

It will be _wonderful._ For an hour and a half, Allison imagines her reunion with Claire, oblivious to the pointless conversations of her family (most of them aren’t talking anyway, except for Klaus, who’s cheerfully pointing out places he’d visited back in 1963 and chiming “Oh, that must be new!” in regards to a fast food drive-thru). There’s a particular relief, a particular glee that rises within her as she gazes out the window at the familiar landscape, which only becomes more familiar the closer they get to San Jose. The restaurant she and her friends used to frequent in Palo Alto, the Children’s Discovery Museum that Claire loved, the Flea Market she loved shopping at in the summer, the park where she and Patrick got engaged. It’s not LA—not home—but it’s close enough that she feels like she’s floating.

She finds herself sitting a bit straighter in her seat.

As they turn down the familiar street, Allison takes a deep breath. Anxiety flutters in her stomach for the first time since their landing, but she holds her head up high as the cab stops in front of the familiar house, pushing open the door even before it comes to a complete stop. When her foot hits the ground it’s like she’s back in LA again, cameras flashing, paparazzi calling her name, the long red carpet stretching ahead of her.

She is _Allison Hargreeves._

And—just as she straightens fully, there’s Patrick in a dark colored V-neck and black slacks. His hair is neatly kept as always, facial hair trimmed fashionably, so familiar that Allison feels an unexpectedly morose twinge, longing for… something else. But she brushes that thought away with practiced ease and feels her expression soften into something both fond and sheepish.

“Hey,” she says softly, which despite their distance carries across the yard easily. His eyes meet hers and he pauses just in front of the door.

“Hey,” he answers. His tone and facial expression are so neutral she loses her footing just a little.

He doesn’t say anything else, so she tentatively begins, “Um, so… funny story. Weird, story, really. Super weird.” She forces a small chuckle and he doesn’t, so after an awkward beat she continues, “I know you probably weren’t expecting me to show up here, but I—I’m just in a bit of an odd situation.”

“Okay,” he says, and his smile is friendly if impersonal. He doesn’t move from the front steps, but he does glance at his watch briefly. “Um, you know, I was actually on my way to meet some friends if you wanted to…?”

“Oh!” And she laughs again, too awkwardly. “Er, you mean Tom and Gordon and the rest of the guys? Those friends?”

“Yeah,” he says, and this time his smile is more genuine. “You know Gordon Stanton?”

“Do I—? Of course I know Gordon.” He was Patrick’s best man at their wedding. Her brow furrows in brief annoyance before she remembers herself. She’d expected a bit more of a frosty reception: more anger, more blame, not for him to invite her out with his friends. “Actually, I just—”

“Sorry, but—”

They start talking at the same time and then stop. Allison says, “Er, you can speak.”

“No, no, you go ahead.”

“It’s fine.”

He rubs the back of his neck in a familiar gesture of discomfort. “I just, er, totally forgot your name. Is it Jenny? Um, Jane? From the other night, right?”

For a moment, everything feels suspended in time as Allison stares at him in a fog of incomprehension. She looks at his face, at the house, down the street, then back to his face. It’s been a couple years but she recognizes Patrick as surely as she would recognize her own face in the mirror.

Finally, she thunders, _“What?”_

“Not Jane, then?” he gulps, face tinged pink. “Oh, god. Mary? Cady? I swear I’m usually good at names.”

“That’s not funny,” she snaps, storming up the lawn towards him. “I know we haven’t been on good terms lately, to put it mildly, but pretending you don’t even recognize me—it’s not just childish, it’s _stupid._ ”

“Now hang on—”

“No, _you_ hang on! If you want to mess around with Jenny or Cady or whoever, I don’t—I don’t care, but—” Allison lets out a frustrated breath and runs her hand through her hair. “Whatever. Whatever. I don’t care, I just want to see Claire.”

Now Patrick looks angry. “Look, I don’t know who you are, but I think you should go.”

“Oh, grow _up,_ Patrick!” So maybe they wouldn’t be able to stay here for the night, not with how Patrick is behaving, but the least she can do while she’s here is grab some cash and see her daughter. Maybe even take her with them for the night. With that thought in mind, Allison moves to push past him into the house, but he physically blocks her.

“If you don’t get off my property I will call the police.” And he pulls a little rectangle out of his pocket to show her, thumb poised over a display of numbers in little gray circles not unlike a phone keypad. She growls in annoyance, hand scrabbling for the doorknob behind him, and when his hand grips her wrist she snaps.

“ _I heard a rumor_ you got the hell out of my way.”

He freezes in an instant and she’s pushing past him into the house, Claire’s name already poised on her tongue. To her left is the spacious living room—empty—and the dining area to her right is empty as well, though for a moment she’s baffled by the sudden change in décor from elegant furnishings she had picked out when they had gotten married. She’d never been particularly fond of the house, not the way she had been about their regular home in LA, but it’s still a place of many fond memories.

Had been, anyway.

He’s already taken down their wedding portraits from the front hall, she notices.

“Claire?” she calls, darting into the back kitchen, but she finds nothing other than a pile of dishes in the sink and new wallpaper that looks suspiciously like the kind she’d ripped down when she had the kitchen redone. Jesus, is Patrick really so petty as to undo everything she had ever done here?

But that leaves the upstairs. It’s too early for whatever sitter Patrick had hired to have put Claire to sleep, yet as she quickly ascends the stairs she doesn’t hear a single sound. No chatting, no playing, no nothing. Claire is never so quiet.

“I called the police,” Patrick says from the front doorway, but he doesn’t try to stop her. She ignores him, swinging around the landing as Claire’s bedroom door comes into sight.

“Claire!” she calls again, pushing into the room. But it’s not Claire’s bedroom. It’s a dusty office, stuffed with stacks upon stacks of boxes, broken furniture, and old, fading posters that she _knows_ Patrick threw out years ago. She takes no time to even wonder, instead lunging into the room across the hall, the master bedroom, then the bathroom and the giant linen closet Claire would sometimes hide in but she’s _nowhere to be found._

Fury rises up, choking her as she flies back down the stairs.

“Where is she?” she demands. _“Where is my daughter?”_

“You’re crazy,” he spits. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Her chest heaves. All she wants, all she’s wanted for the past few years, is to hold her daughter again, and her desperation is so heavy that her voice trembles under the weight of it as she gasps, “ _I heard a rumor_ you told me the truth!”

Allison stares hard as Patrick goes rigid, his eyes turning that terrible white before returning to normal. In the distance she hears sirens.

His lips part.

“I’ve never met you before in my life.”

She tries to breathe. There’s no air to be found.

“You’re lying.”

“Allison.”

It’s Luther. He lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, gazing at her like she’s an animal about to attack, but his voice is firm when he says, “We have to go. The police are coming.” She looks behind him, at Diego, Klaus, and Vanya standing just outside the cab, eyes on Luther and poised to run.

She realizes they won’t be able to pay the cabbie, now.

“Allison,” Luther says again, softer this time. “Claire’s not here.”

The sirens are closer now. She can see the lights flickering in the distance.

As Luther’s hand tightens on her shoulder, Allison casts one last glance into the cold, empty house before turning and running, running through the backyard and over a fence and down an alley, her siblings’ footsteps echoing heavily behind her as the stiffed cab driver hollers after them. Despite the fact she hasn’t been there in years, she navigates the paths and side streets with ease, and she runs. Away from Patrick with his empty, unfamiliar gaze, that empty, soulless house, and the empty, haunting specter of a daughter that was never born. She runs until she can’t anymore, until the lengthening shadows merge into a dark blur through her tears, and she falls to her knees in some back alley and thinks of Raymond and thinks of Claire and thinks of the fact that she left one for the other and now she has neither.

When she wipes her cheeks dry and rises to her feet again, her siblings are there, slouched up and down the alley in an attempt to give her space. They all watch as she stands up straight and takes a deep breath, gathering herself into a semblance of composure, pushing all of her pain and grief so deeply inside her that they no longer ache.

Her eyes flash in the gathering darkness.

“Okay,” she says in a rock steady voice. “New plan.”

They spend the night in that alley, for lack of anywhere else to go, but it isn’t too bad. They all take a moment to express their gratitude that they had the foresight to take the briefcase with them, and then Klaus cracks some jokes that get Vanya and Diego smiling. Luther agrees to take the first watch as the rest of them fall off to sleep, but when Allison wakes the next morning he’s still awake, sitting ramrod straight against the wall with the briefcase held securely in his grasp.

Vanya and Klaus are gone, which is the first thing she notices before the events of the last twenty four hours hurtle painfully to the forefront of her mind. Last night, they had arrived at a swift consensus regarding the first part of their plan: Diego would take the briefcase to Commission headquarters to hopefully figure out what was going on. If anyone would know, it was the Commission, and after the fight on Sissy’s farm Diego was apparently on good terms with them; if all went well it would be an easy intelligence gathering mission.

So Diego leaves early that morning, while Klaus and Vanya are out trying to scrounge up something to eat.

And then he returns in a flash of energy less than ten minutes after leaving. His face has lost a shade of color and Allison feels only a flash of resignation quickly chased away by steely resolve, already anticipating the bad news.

“There’s nothing there,” he manages, shell shocked. “I don’t get it. I was there—the briefcase has a specific setting to take it back to HQ.” He had explained this to them last night, that it would be a simple matter to take the briefcase there and back (he’s not certain how to program it to go anywhere or when else, and he’s also not certain any other way to contact them because of the fact he skipped out on orientation). “There’s nothing there. I know it’s the right place, because the briefcase literally couldn’t have taken me anywhere else, but the Commission isn’t there.”

Allison absorbs the news in silence. For a moment, the morning bustle of the city washes over her and, oddly, the only thing she thinks about is how rumpled she must look from wearing the same clothes for two straight days.

She stares idly at the foot traffic passing by and doesn’t notice Luther and Diego watching for her reaction.

“Okay,” Luther says finally. “Then we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way.”

At Diego’s sardonic expression, he clarifies, “At a library, I mean. Do our research there. We figure out what’s been changed in this timeline, then we can use the briefcase to fix it.”

“No,” Allison interjects, snapping to attention. “It doesn’t matter what’s changed. I know how to fix all of it.” She reaches for the case; Diego snatches it away from her.

“Whoa!”

She grits her teeth and reaches for it again. “Just give it to me. I have a plan.”

“What pl—stop it, Allison!”

She lunges behind him for the handle as he attempts to shove her off and Luther dithers uncertainly, trying without much success to get them to stop.

“ _Seriously,_ Diego? Just give me the goddamn briefcase!”

“You’re crazy! Get off me!”

Diego’s back slams into the brick wall behind him, loosening the briefcase from his grip, but he determinedly swings it from her reach once again. She clambers for it, more out of irritation than desperation to actually do anything with it, until her fingertips make contact with one of the clasps and she _pulls._

Before Diego can even react, the briefcase falls open with a dull clatter. For a moment it sputters lethargically, a few sparks of energy burst out with a fizzle.

And then it dies. From what Allison understands, they should have been flung into time as soon as the case had opened—but nothing happens. It dangles open lifelessly as Allison backs away and Diego swings it around to stare at it incredulously. He closes it without a word, then inches the lid back open. This time there are no sparks.

When Vanya and Klaus return with dubiously acquired stale bagels, Diego is still opening and closing the briefcase with a dumbfounded expression.

“So just to summarize,” Luther is saying, “we’re trapped in yet another messed up timeline without a briefcase or Five to fix this, and the one organization that might have been able to tell us what’s going on apparently doesn’t exist here. Yes?’

“Yeah,” Allison sighs.

“Oh, good,” says Klaus clapping his hands. “The briefcase is _broken?_ I thought things were getting too boring around here.”

“Yeah, and the Commission doesn’t exist here,” Luther tells them, reaching for the bagel Vanya offers him. “We’re pretty stuck.”

There’s a glum silence as they chew their paltry breakfasts. Even Klaus is silent at the news, gazing at nothing as he mechanically rips apart his food. It’s the 1960s again, but worse—what is the point of leaving their lives behind only to end up here, at another dead end? No time traveling briefcase, no time traveling Commission, no time traveling brother.

They are well and truly stranded.

Again.

Allison scoffs at the thought, shaking her head to herself. “We should get going,” she says. “Sooner or later the cops are going to show up and send us along.”

They head off out into the street, bustling with morning foot-traffic. They stop at a falafel stand for the time and quick directions to the nearest library, which is thankfully quite close, and Allison pushes her way determinedly through the crowd, head held high as pedestrians all but dive to get out of her way. For a while she’s focused only on getting to the library and figuring out what’s going on, but after a while she can’t help but notice the sheer number of people focused on their little rectangular devices, an oddity she had briefly noticed on their walk yesterday but dismissed. She’s fairly certain she had never seen such a thing before.

But before long they have reached the front doors of a modest little building and push their way into the comfort of air conditioning. After a brief discussion, they each separate with the agreement to meet up again in a few hours, and Allison wanders around for a little while in an attempt to find the microfiche viewers. She finally asks a librarian, who directs her to the “computer lab,” a small room filled with sleek, black screens.

She’s used a computer before, of course, but they were nothing like these and she had no idea how they would be considered useful.

She tracks down Diego, because he’s the first sibling she finds, and when Diego can’t help they track down an incredulous librarian who shows them how to research on “Google” the “On Line” encyclopedia. Once she does get the hang of it, however, she finds it’s an immensely useful tool, though her search ultimately reveals disappointing results. Diego, who goes off on his own for a little while, also returns to commandeer a computer of his own with the help of a friendly library aide, and seems to be having better luck than she. She hopes, anyway.

Several hours later when they all meet up again, however, a quick glance around the table at everyone’s faces reveals Allison is not the only one with frustrating results.

“Dad’s not here,” Luther begins abruptly. “I mean, not here as in San Francisco, but _here._ I can’t find any evidence of him ever existing. DS Umbrella Manufacturing Co. went out of business in 1971, owned by a guy named Gerald Fitzpatrick. I looked into the Gerald guy but couldn’t find any evidence he ever met Dad. The company was in his family all the way since 1891.”

“I looked into Dad, too,” Diego says, leaning forward intently. “One of the librarians helped me do a search on the Internet machine. It can find results from all over the country: phone numbers, addresses, old newspaper articles, records, anything. But when we looked up Dad? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And we looked up the manor, too, but apparently it’s been a strip mall since 1982. No sign Dad ever owned it.”

“No Umbrella Academy, either,” Allison interjects. “Or Sparrow Academy, what have you. Academy of superpowered individuals.” She swallows. “Actually, I couldn’t find any evidence of _any_ kids with superpowers being born. That kind of thing would make the news, right? But there were no headlines of any kind on October 1, 1989 about any weird kids being born. Here, superpowers only exist in comic books.”

“I wasn’t done—”

“What, so like we weren’t even born?” Klaus muses. “This is so much worse than being un-adopted.”

“So Dad doesn’t exist,” says Vanya, “and we don’t exist. And the Commission doesn’t exist. How does this even happen?”

“We don’t know for sure Dad doesn’t exist,” Luther points out. “Maybe we just can’t find him.”

“Oh yeah? And what are the odds a high-profile billionaire recluse leaves no kind of evidence of his existence anywhere?”

“Dad had the company in 1963, when we met him,” says Vanya. “All this change can’t have anything to do with us, then, because him buying the company still would have happened—or I guess not happened?—whichever, before we met him back then.”

Allison nods slowly. “So… this doesn’t have to do with us in Dallas, then.”

“It kind of makes sense,” Diego mutters, frowning. When everyone looks at him, he elaborates, “I mean, it does, doesn’t it? In a weird kind of way? Like, of course in this… version of events… where the Commission doesn’t exist, Dad doesn’t either, and we don’t. We’re all the weird shit. Without us, the world is just. Normal, I guess.”

They absorb this theory in silence.

“Then… how do we get back to the non-normie universe?” It’s Klaus who asks what they all seem to be thinking.

Now Diego’s expression turns smug. “Obviously we have to fix the briefcase.”

Allison rolls her eyes. “Sure, simple as that. I don’t know about you, Diego, but I skipped out on time machine repair 101 in college.”

“You didn’t even go to college,” he shoots back reflexively, then, before she can respond, slams a large hardcover down on the table with gusto. Allison grabs it first, spinning it so she can read the title.

_This Book Was Written In an Alternate Universe: A Non-Physicist’s Guide To Multiverse Theory_

“The author of this book is a professor of quantum mechanics or something,” Diego is saying, picking it up again and gesturing to it emphatically. “Doctor Ginevra Matheson. She knows all about this time travel stuff. And! The best part! She teaches at Stanford. Half an hour by cab, tops. If anyone could fix the briefcase, it’d be her, right? She fixes is, then boom! We can get back and fix… you know, whatever is going on.”

“Okay, but theorizing about time travel is very different than knowing how to build a time travel machine.”

“So we shouldn’t even try to fix it, then,” he snaps. “Sure, let’s just sit here in normie land until Five shows back up again and fucks us into another new dimension. Personally, I’d like to get my life back.”

“Five was just trying t—” Vanya starts, but Luther drowns her out.

“I think it’s a good first step. We could at least talk to her and go from there.”

“Good,” says Diego, “because I already sent her an electronic mail, and she sent me one back.”

“You did _what?”_ Allison bursts out at the same time Klaus, sounding impressed, says “An electronic mail?” “What exactly did you tell this woman?”

“All I said was that we were interested in knowing some more about time travel. I said I was writing a sci-fi novel.”

“And?”

“She said she would love to be of assistance,” he says smugly. “And that we are free to drop by her office at Stanford whenever it is convenient.”

So around two hours later, all five Hargreeves siblings hop onto a bus, fares covered in cash that Diego and Klaus managed to steal from someone’s wallet. Allison had been asked to simply rumor a cab driver for a free ride—but suddenly all she could think of was Lila and Sissy’s farm and her inability to breathe and she had felt physically ill. And the bus fare isn’t too high, anyway, so she only feels slightly guilty as she takes her seat and thinks of the innocent person her brothers had robbed in broad daylight.

Then she thinks about Patrick’s face last night when his eyes went white and feels ill again.

The bus lurches around a turn, throwing Allison out her thoughts and slightly into Vanya’s space until she braces herself against the seat in front of her.

“Sorry,” she murmurs, righting herself.

“Hm,” says Vanya, sounding irritated, which is not the response Allison had been expecting. She stares at Vanya, who’s pressed against the window and staring at the passing landscape. The bus pulls up to another stop and a crowd of people disembark while others replace them, slowly filling up the space in the aisles.

“Hey,” Allison says, nudging her. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Vanya responds tersely.

Stung, Allison turns away. Then she hears Vanya inhale sharply.

“Actually, I’m not fine. Five is _gone_ and you guys don’t even seem to care! What if he showed up back in the park and we weren’t there and now he can’t find us? And what happens if we do fix the briefcase. Are you guys really just going to leave him here, with no idea what’s going on, all alone?”

“Okay, first of all, Five isn’t exactly helpless,” Allison retorts defensively. “Second, if he does show up here, he can time travel on his own. He won’t need to briefcase.”

“Sounds more like you don’t give a shit about him, if you ask me,” Vanya snaps. “Don’t think I forgot about your fight back in 2019, right before Five took us here.”

“The f—?” She cuts herself off when she realizes her voice has been increasing in volume and glances around self-consciously before lowering her voice to heated murmur. “This is about that? That was nothing. Just a stupid argument.”

For a moment, Vanya doesn’t say anything, and Allison studies her face as the bus slows to a halt once again, riders moving past their seats to either sit down or disembark, oblivious to the hushed argument taking place right in front of them. As a child—even as an adult—she had always been so quiet, timid. The Vanya sitting next to her, eyes flashing with anger, jaw clenched, is largely unfamiliar.

“What I think,” she says finally, as the bus begins to pull away from the stop, “is that you guys don’t care about Five unless he’s helping you get what you want.”

“That’s so not true!” Allison exclaims, floored.

“Oh, it’s not? Interesting then how you guys have barely mentioned him since he disappeared.”

“Vanya, my god,” she groans. “I know you don’t remember, but this is exactly last time Five took us time traveling. That’s why you landed alone in Dallas. We all landed at a different point in time and Five didn’t even show up for a couple years. Time travel is just a crapshoot.”

“And you don’t think it’s odd that we all landed together this time except for him?”

“It’s—” Frustrated, Allison casts her gaze around the bus for a moment. “Yeah, it’s different, but we have bigger problems right now! Five will be fine!”

She doesn’t understand why Vanya is suddenly so angry at her. “What would you have us do, exactly?” she bursts when Vanya doesn’t respond immediately. “Sit in the park every day for the next however many years until he shows up again?”

“You could at least pretend to care about him,” she finally says.

“I do care!”

“Maybe I would believe that if you hadn’t blamed him for everything that’s happened since he showed up again!”

Allison’s jaw works for a moment. “That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant.” She remembers the argument at the motel room they’d managed to pay for with the very last of their cash from the 60s, where they had all regrouped and bandaged their injuries. She remembers her helplessness and frustration slowly mounting until she could no longer control it.

She remembers his eyes—whether due to an unconscious association with his powers, or because of their constant sharp intensity, his eyes had often reminded her of electricity in all its dangerous, unbridled chaos in a way that had often unnerved her as a child—as she had said some things that she hadn’t entirely meant.

She can tell Vanya that. That she hadn’t meant entirely what she said, and that she’s sorry. But deep within her is a spark of resentment, kept alive by the memory of everything she’s lost: Claire. Raymond. Her life in the 1960s. Her life in the original 2019.

And she just can’t bring herself to say it.

“I didn’t hear you disagree with me back then,” is what she says instead.

Vanya lets out a strangled noise but can’t seem to form any coherent words. She doesn’t say anything as the bus pulls to another stop and Allison swings around into the newly vacated seat a few rows behind her, next to Klaus, and stares past him out the window for the rest of the trip as he chats one-sidedly about anything that comes to his mind.

By the time they’ve arrived at the Stanford University campus, Allison is starting to feel remorseful, and she glances Vanya’s way a few times as Diego mutters about directions in an attempt to catch her eye. Then she realizes that, for all his bluster, Diego has no idea where he’s going and she has to intervene in order to actually meet the professor before the end of the day and somehow her heated conversation with Vanya falls to the back of her mind replaced by a singular purpose.

The campus is, of course, relatively quiet, since most students are still on summer break, though every now and then they encounter an occasional student or faculty member who are plenty helpful in directing them to the professor’s office with nothing more than a curious glance.

As she strides down the hallway and up the stairs, her siblings scrambling to keep up, she says, “We should come up with a plan of exactly what to say to her.”

“I told you,” Diego puffs, “I said I’m writing a sci-fi novel about time travel.”

“Yeah, and you constructed a perfectly function replica of the fictional time machine? That’s not—”

“We’ll figure it out,” he interrupts, irritated, just as they come to the third floor. When they push through the double doors into the silence of the corridor, the professor’s office directly to their left.

 _G. Matheson_ reads the placard next to the closed door.

Before Allison can react, Diego knocks vigorously on the door. “ _Diego!”_ she hisses, but he dismisses her with a flippant hand wave and palms the knob. He knocks again, and when he pushes his way into the office Allison shoves her way in behind him, leaving the others to wait awkwardly in the hallway.

Inside is a young woman standing by the office’s small bookshelf, looking surprised and confused to see two strangers suddenly appearing in front of her. When Diego emphatically offers his hand to shake the poor woman nearly drops her stack of books in her attempt to oblige, nodding dumbly as he bombards her with verbal diarrhea.

“Hi, Professor, my name is Diego Hargreeves, I sent you an electronic mail this morning about the science fiction novel I’m currently writing about time travel—I’m a writer—and wondering if I could ask you for some of your expertise on the subject, you know, to make it more realistic, at least, you, know, theoretically realistic since it is _fiction_ after all, haha, and I saw your book at the library the other day and thought, ‘Oh, this is someone who knows what they’re talking about!’ And so… um, yes,” he concludes. When the woman just blinks, he adds, “I’m a writer, you see.”

She stares at the two of them for another moment before she says, “I’m sorry, did you have an appointment?”

“I sent you an electronic mail,” Diego says. “This morning.”

“Oh, an email,” she says, and her confusion dissolves slightly in favor of friendly amusement. Allison relaxes slightly. “I have to say, not many people call it ‘electronic mail’ these days.”

“Just a slip of the tongue, I’m sure,” Allison says smoothly, flashing a movie-star smile and offering her hand. “Allison Johnson, Diego’s agent.”

She sizes up the woman as they shake. In Allison’s eyes, she hardly looks old enough to be a professor—late twenties or early thirties at the oldest—and wearing a brightly patterned button down under a dark blazer and pink platform boots that don’t exactly scream “professional.”

Her hunch is confirmed when the woman politely interrupts Diego’s spiel. “Oh, I’m not Dr. Matheson. I’m just one of her grad students. The doctor’s already gone for the day—she was only in this morning for a meeting.”

Of fucking course.

Diego deflates slightly. “She said in her message that I was welcome to come see her,” he says, sounding vaguely accusatory.

“I doubt—oh, Diego Hargeeves, right? I remember now. Look, Dr. Matheson gets, like, hundreds of emails a day and she has me answer emails for her sometimes. I remember you now, and I _also_ remember that I definitely did not say you could just show up at her office today.”

Allison shoots Diego a glare, who sheepishly mutters something about not bothering the woman any longer and turning to go. But she’s not ready for this trip to have been in vain.

“You’re her student, right? How familiar are you with theories of time travel?”

“Quite,” the woman responds, meeting Allison’s challenging gaze unflinchingly. “I’ve studied extensively under Dr. Matheson and co-authored numerous papers in the field of theoretical physics. It’s a personal interest of mine.”

“If you were handed a time machine that was no longer functioning, how would you go about fixing it?”

“How would—? I can’t just fix something if I have no idea how it functions. What time travel theory is it based on? Are we talking about a time dilation effect here? Wormholes? Black holes? An infinite cylinder? That would be interesting, if you could get that to work. I’m personally a fan of cosmic strings theory. But you’d have to pick your theory and work from there. I can’t fix an imaginary machine I know nothing about.”

Allison and Diego glance at each other. A quick, wordless exchange of raised eyebrows and head shaking ensues, and then Allison meets the woman’s curious gaze. “What if we could show you a real one?”

“A real time travel machine?” she says dubiously. “Yeah, sure, that would be pretty interesting.”

“We have one,” says Diego. “And it’s broken. We need help to get it fixed.”

The woman glances back and forth at the two of them, both deathly serious as they stare back at her. She nods slowly. “All right, who put you up to this? Was it Adam? No, he wouldn’t. Melvin? He would think this is funny.”

“We’re not joking,” Diego says. “We can prove it to you.”

“Sure.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to humor us, would it?” Allison asks desperately. “We have it with us, right now. You can have a look, and if you’re right and we don’t have a time machine, then we go our separate ways, no harm, no foul. But if we’re not lying…”

She lets the first half of the sentence hang in the air; the second half is self-explanatory.

The young woman’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. They flick from Diego to Allison and back again, then gaze off out the window for a moment, weighing her options.

“It’s really a matter of life and death,” Diego wheedles a tad dishonestly.

She sighs and glances at her watch. Then she whips out a sleek digital rectangle and begins tapping it furiously with her thumbs as she speaks. “Well, first, I’m not going off on my own with a couple of strangers who may or may not be either crazy or trying to pull a fast one—but because I’m, as my mother has often said, too damn curious for my own good, here’s my deal: you will take me out for a late lunch, which you will pay for, at a restaurant of my choosing where we will meet up with a friend of mine. After we finish lunch, complements of y’all, you can then show my friend and myself some time travel. All right?”

Already decided herself, she stalks past them to the office door as Diego and Allison have another silent conversation, quickly arriving at an agreement.

Then she opens the door and Klaus tumbles in headfirst, nearly making contact with the woman’s shins, while Vanya and Luther are seen hastily scrambling away and assuming an air of feigned casualness. She looks at Allison and Diego, deadpan, but all she says is, “Friends of yours, I’m assuming?”

* * *

The Hargreeves watch in silence as the woman—who had introduced herself as Murphy—eagerly polishes off half a large pizza (topped with onion, pineapple, and anchovies, and drizzled with ranch) in five minutes flat, pausing only to sip from a soft drink. Klaus is starving, too—not that the toppings she picked make an appealing combo, but he’s had worse. With Allison’s stubborn refusal to use her rumor for anything useful, they don’t have the funds for a hot dog, let alone enough pizza for all of them to eat, but it’s Klaus’s humble opinion that if they’re going to dine and dash the least they could do is dash with a couple more pizzas.

The aforementioned friend hasn’t yet arrived, but Murphy is unconcerned as she finishes the last of her slice with a satisfied sigh and sets her drink cup on the table with gusto, apparently done. There are three slices left.

“You sure you guys aren’t hungry?” she asks, leaning back in her chair.

“Well—” Klaus starts, before a steel-toed shoe connects with his shin. As he curses, Allison smoothly lies, “We ate a little while ago.”

“How long is a little while ago?” she says impishly. “You being time travelers and all.”

“1963,” Klaus says. “Or next year, depending on how you look at it.” He doesn’t count the bagels from that morning that had barely curbed his appetite.

“You sure get around, huh?” She takes another sip of her drink, then nods towards the briefcase in Luther’s grasp. “That it? Your time machine?”

“Maybe,” Luther says defensively.

“And how exactly did you come to be in possession of a time traveling briefcase?”

They hadn’t had a moment alone since their meeting at the university to discuss exactly how much of the story they would tell this woman. Vanya watches uncertainly as Luther and Allison glance at each other and Diego stares at her as if he could telepathically read her intentions through sheer force of will.

Klaus’s hand inches toward the remain pizza. When another steel-toed shoe comes swinging, he barely dodges.

“We found it,” says Allison at the exact same time Klaus says, “We took it from time-traveling assassins from a Commission of time-traveling assholes.” As everyone glares at him, he continues through a mouthful of pizza, “Or something. Honestly, I wasn’t paying attention when they said what they do. Other than assassin-ing. Also kidnapping and torturing.”

Murphy raises her eyebrows. “Given that ‘we found it’ is the lamest lie to ever exist, I’m actually inclined to believe whatever the hell you just said.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you, Murph,” he says solemnly. With his mouth full of pizza, it comes out as “Ahwoondyeoo, Mmph.”

“You believe him?” Allison says incredulously.

“No. I just believe him more than you.” She adds, “Look, as interested as I am in the circumstances surrounding your possession of the alleged time machine and whatever is going on with—well, what’s going on with you guys—you claimed you needed some kind of help. Let me take a wild guess: you’re from another time, you traveled here for whatever reason, and now your machine is broken and you’re stranded. How right am I?”

“Pretty right,” says Diego reluctantly.

“How original.” She rolls her eyes. “Not that I believe you even remotely.”

“I must say, you’re taking this pretty calmly,” Allison says, eyes slightly narrowed. She leans forward in her seat, meeting Murphy’s eyes evenly. “Most people would run away and call 911 when strangers appear and start claiming to be time travelers from another time, not sit down and have pizza with them.”

Murphy snorts. “Wait, you barged randomly into my mentor’s office and all but begged me to help you, and the fact that I’m considering it makes _me_ suspicious?”

Which is a fair protest, but given all the bullshit they’ve been through Klaus wouldn’t have been surprised if she was somehow a secret Commission agent who will kill them given one chance—even knowing the Commission doesn’t seem to exist here. Crazier things have happened.

Aware of several expectant gazes now trained on her, Murphy frowns and fiddles with her plastic straw. “It’s well known among my various social circles that I believe there’s more to this world than what’s established in our current body of knowledge. So either someone who knows this about me has hired you to pull a prank on me, or you’re telling the truth. But either way—” She plucks a slice of pineapple from the remaining pizza and eats it with a smirk— “I got free pizza out of it, so it’s a win-win for me.”

Another glance passes between Luther and Allison, but Diego is already nodding as if that’s quite a reasonable thing to say. Allison seems to agree, because she straightens in her seat and leans over the table conspiratorially, murmuring, “The truth is, we aren’t just stranded here. As far was we can tell this timeline is completely different from the one we’ve come from. It’s like a completely different universe.”

“Ah, the classic time traveler conundrum. A real _Back to the Future-_ esque problem.” She steeples her fingers. “Tell me, what’s different about how things are here versus where and when you’re from?”

“This little gizmo, for one,” Klaus pipes up before anyone else, snatching her silver rectangle with lightning quickness and poking at the screen several times when it lights up. “What do these words mean? How is it doing that?” When his poking fails to evoke any change on the screen, he knocks it none too lightly against the table.

“It’s a—give me that, you bitch!—it’s a phone. I don’t understand, are you time travelers from the past, then? Stop that, I just got the screen replaced!”

“We’re from 2019,” says Allison confusedly while Vanya says, “What kind of past timeline has futuristic technology?”

“I don’t know,” Murphy says through gritted teeth, trying to grab her “phone” back from Klaus. “Maybe someone killed Steve Jobs in your timeline. Look, I’ll unlock it for you if you promise not to hit it anymore.”

“Who’s Steve Jobs?” Diego demands.

“No one important. Unless he’s the source of the divergence between our two timelines. It’s a touchscreen, see? You can swipe it.”

“What’s YouTube mean?”

“Jesus, if you guys really are actors you should be on the big screen. When did you say you were from again?”

“2019,” Allison repeats, eager to get back on topic. “We lived our lives normally, then from 2019 we traveled back to the 1960s for a while, and when we came back to 2019 things had changed. So Five was going to—”

“Five what?”

“No, our brother Five. We’re siblings. He was going to fix our original timeline but then we landed here. And we can’t find him. So now we have to get back to our own, but the briefcase is broken.”

“Why is your brother’s name a number?”

“Long and irrelevant story,” Allison dismisses. “The point is, like you said, we need someone to fix the briefcase so we can get back to 2019— _our_ 2019\. Our lives.” Her voice resolutely does not break.

For a moment, Murphy absorbs this in silence. Her gaze flicks to her watch. “Well, I can tell you Professor Matheson wouldn’t have been much help to you. Her body of work is purely theoretical. I doubt she could fix your time machine; she doesn’t have an engineering background.” She takes a moment to watch their crestfallen expressions before adding slowly, “But I do. And I might be able to help you. My friend and I are actually quite interested in this sort of thing.”

“You and your friend are knowledgeable on the topic of instantaneous temporal-spatial travel?” Luther says doubtfully.

At that moment, Klaus registers movement in the periphery of his vision just before he hears the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor and looks up. A young man in his late twenties with mussed dark hair slides elegantly into the empty chair between Diego and Murphy, dressed in a sweater vest and a collared shirt that seem to Klaus unseasonably warm. Reaching a height barely taller than Vanya, he should seem unimposing, yet everything about him seems _sharp:_ the sharp, decisive sweep of his movements, the sharp, well-tailored look of his clothing, and a sharp, intense gaze that flicks over each of them in turn before catching Murphy’s face as they share a long, knowing glance. His eyes, when they meet Klaus’, are oddly electric.

“Instantaneous temporal-spatial travel?” the young man echoes, flashing an enigmatic smile that rings a tiny bell of familiarity in the back of Klaus’ mind. “I suppose I know a thing or two about it.”


End file.
